SwAggeR
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2013
- Messages
- 2,991
- Reaction score
- -13
- Country
- Location
After three long years, there is light at the end of the tunnel. A Defence Minister-headed panel with powers to decide on the direction of military technology research in India could soon be reality.
To be christened Defence Technology Commission (DTC), as proposed in May 2010, the panel will have powers to order Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to make available technologies for military use within timeframes and costs, and fix responsibility too.
The DTC is expected to be a game-changer for defence research and energise the sector.
“We are putting up the proposal now (to the cabinet) and it is being processed. It went through one round in the Defence Ministry and came back with suggestions. We have implemented them and are taking the auditors’ views. Once we are done with that, the proposal moves to the Finance Ministry,” DRDO Director-General Avinash Chander said.
After the Finance Ministry’s vetting, the note on DTC would go to the Cabinet, particularly the Cabinet Committee on Security chaired by the Prime Minister, for approval.
However, Chander refused to set a deadline for putting DTC in place. “I don’t know what will take how long. We are confident everybody is recognising the need for it,” Chander told The Sunday Standard.
“We are very keen and we feel DTC is essential if we want to have a coherent, synergistic decision-making (on defence technologies),” the top defence scientist, who has worked on the Agni missiles, said.
However, he dispelled misconceptions that the DTC would be modelled on the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which is headed by the Department of Atomic Energy Secretary, and takes most of its decision for internal implementation, as it is “the owner, assessor and end-user”.
“DTC will be for the three armed forces and their requirements. Whatever DRDO does, it has to be strategised and synergised with the end-user. So internal aspects of ‘what you can do’ do not drive the policy, but also the needs and the priorities of the end-user. The end-users (forces) have multiple options to exercise to meet needs and DRDO is only one of the options,” Chander, who directed the development of both Agni-4 and Agni-5, said.
“This Defence Technology Commission’s primary role will be to assess what DRDO can do really. How far it is doing it? If it is doing it well or not. What more it can do, if it is doing well? That is the fundamental difference with AEC,” he said.
To be headed by the Defence Minister, the DTC will have all stakeholders and a few scientists from outside DRDO in it, apart from the services. The DTC secretariat would operate from DRDO headquarters.
The DRDO has been criticised for taking three decades to get the Tejas LCA and Arjun tanks operational. DRDO spent `17,269 crore since 1983 on LCA and got initial operational clearance only in December 2013. Other delayed projects include the intermediate jet trainer, long range surface-to-air missiles and airborne early warning systems.
SOURCE
To be christened Defence Technology Commission (DTC), as proposed in May 2010, the panel will have powers to order Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to make available technologies for military use within timeframes and costs, and fix responsibility too.
The DTC is expected to be a game-changer for defence research and energise the sector.
“We are putting up the proposal now (to the cabinet) and it is being processed. It went through one round in the Defence Ministry and came back with suggestions. We have implemented them and are taking the auditors’ views. Once we are done with that, the proposal moves to the Finance Ministry,” DRDO Director-General Avinash Chander said.
After the Finance Ministry’s vetting, the note on DTC would go to the Cabinet, particularly the Cabinet Committee on Security chaired by the Prime Minister, for approval.
However, Chander refused to set a deadline for putting DTC in place. “I don’t know what will take how long. We are confident everybody is recognising the need for it,” Chander told The Sunday Standard.
“We are very keen and we feel DTC is essential if we want to have a coherent, synergistic decision-making (on defence technologies),” the top defence scientist, who has worked on the Agni missiles, said.
However, he dispelled misconceptions that the DTC would be modelled on the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which is headed by the Department of Atomic Energy Secretary, and takes most of its decision for internal implementation, as it is “the owner, assessor and end-user”.
“DTC will be for the three armed forces and their requirements. Whatever DRDO does, it has to be strategised and synergised with the end-user. So internal aspects of ‘what you can do’ do not drive the policy, but also the needs and the priorities of the end-user. The end-users (forces) have multiple options to exercise to meet needs and DRDO is only one of the options,” Chander, who directed the development of both Agni-4 and Agni-5, said.
“This Defence Technology Commission’s primary role will be to assess what DRDO can do really. How far it is doing it? If it is doing it well or not. What more it can do, if it is doing well? That is the fundamental difference with AEC,” he said.
To be headed by the Defence Minister, the DTC will have all stakeholders and a few scientists from outside DRDO in it, apart from the services. The DTC secretariat would operate from DRDO headquarters.
The DRDO has been criticised for taking three decades to get the Tejas LCA and Arjun tanks operational. DRDO spent `17,269 crore since 1983 on LCA and got initial operational clearance only in December 2013. Other delayed projects include the intermediate jet trainer, long range surface-to-air missiles and airborne early warning systems.
SOURCE
